Tommy Robinson supporters outside the Old Bailey. ‘We have witnessed a growth in online activism headed by international far-right figureheads such as the former English Defence League leader, Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, AKA Tommy Robinson.’
Photograph: David Mirzoeff/PA

Universal credit plans won’t only make people poorer. They will open the door for the far right.

On a visit to Grimsby, a man tells me that hope is a buffer between himself and abject poverty. It doesn’t sound like asking for much. But take that buffer away, as universal credit looks set to do for millions across Britain, and you make room for hate.

The rollout of universal credit might have been postponed, but on top of years of cruel austerity that has consistently hit the poorest and the most vulnerable hardest, the fact that the government is still planning to implement these plans at all is disgraceful.

Gordon Brown is right to suggest that the introduction of universal credit may result in riots. In fact, he didn’t go far enough in his predictions to link this to a far-right threat. These changes won’t solve the budget deficit but they will add to tensions.

It is no coincidence that the BNP never took hold of Cambridge, or that Ukip fails to make ground in London. The hard end of the political right has found strength in exploiting genuine anxieties in communities that have been hurt most by globalisation and austerity. They have offered mass immigration and “cultural incompatibility” as simple answers to complex problems.

We need to tune into the scale of that threat in 2018, where high levels of employment belie precarious and destructive working conditions, with food bank use at its highest on record, stories of children eating out of bins, and the closure of key services that once held our communities together. People are angry about immigration, but they are much angrier about industry closure, job losses, precarious working conditions and a political elite that doesn’t want to know.

HOPE not hate’s new report, Fear, Hope and Loss, suggests that predicted economic decline as a result of the UK’s departure from the EU, as well as hardened austerity measures such as the introduction of universal credit, could open the door to a rightwing, populist surge. Our report tracks attitudes to immigration and multiculturalism using seven years of polling and answers from 43,000 people, and maps them to neighbourhoods in a more granular fashion than has been done to date.

We find that the most hostile attitudes to immigration and multiculturalism are concentrated in areas that have lost the wealth and stability they once had, single-industry towns that have seen rapid decline and where there is a sense of hopelessness. Identity issues are dialled up or down depending on how the economy is doing, while a sense of power and privilege slipping away fuels resentment. This sense of loss fuels fears among dominant groups of being “overtaken”, a dislocation of social status and wellbeing for those who are white and British, who struggle to keep up with progressive social norms.

The demise of the political far right in the UK does not mean the threat has been eliminated. We have witnessed a growth in online activism headed by international far-right figureheads such as the former English Defence League leader, Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, AKA Tommy Robinson. The recent #FreeTommy campaign sparked the revival of a far-right street movement, drawing people on to the streets of Westminster in greater numbers than any demonstration held by the EDL.

We mapped Change.org petitions in support of #FreeTommy, one of which racked up more than 630,000 signatures, and found that the majority of UK signatures came from post-industrial or coastal towns, places that have seen significant decline and long-term issues with unemployment and deprivation.

Political manifestations of hostile attitudes may have moved from the ballot box to online petitions, from local representatives to global figures, but environmental drivers still charge these sentiments and their political mobilisation. There is palpable anger and resentment across the country, most concentrated in communities that have consistently lost out in a redistribution of wealth to core cities or overseas.

Our report also finds newfound optimism about the future directly linked to Brexit in communities where deprivation drives hate. Many feel that Brexit will solve their problems. But with economic projections suggesting that the impact of a hard Brexit will affect those living in our poorest regions most, this bubble of newfound optimism will burst. An economic crash will most likely add to inequality, rather than reverse it, creating a window of opportunity for populist exploitation.

A potent mix of cruel austerity policies, national economic decline, anti-establishment mistrust and false hope for a prosperity-delivering Brexit present fertile conditions for hateful narratives to explain away these problems.

We need a better offer than universal credit. People need to know there is hope.

• Rosie Carter is senior policy officer at HOPE not hate and author of Fear, Hope and Loss